


Her Love

by Lola_McGee



Series: Her Self [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Ace Reporter spoilers, Angsty?, But it's the only one I've got, Character Study, Depression, F/F, Gen, I could write character studies of her all day, Jess the Secretary was planned this time, Just not as angsty, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Lena Luthor is Important, Lena Luthor is Queer, Lena Luthor is so important and valid y'all, Mentions of Therapy, Not Happy, Probably Weak Ending, S02Ep18 Spoilers, Since this is only a small part of Lena Luthor's psychology, Swearing, With a non terrible ending, and, probably, quite a bit of it, really I want to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 12:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10809069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola_McGee/pseuds/Lola_McGee
Summary: A character study into Lena Luthor and how she relates to those she loves.





	Her Love

**Author's Note:**

> So I was blown away by the response to the previous fic (which was way nicer and larger than I could have ever hoped for), and then I had an idea for this little series. Takes place I've also wanted to write Lena Luthor for a long time. Because Lena Luthor is so damn important and needs a hug.
> 
> Again, I've only seen a handful of episodes of Supergirl, because I cannot tolerate some of the things they pulled. I think I've checked enough to make sure that I'm not actively breaking canon (especially with Jack; having not seen Ace Reporter), but I might be.
> 
> The fact that Lena Luthor is queer isn't super important to this story, but should still be known. Lena Luthor is queer, and Katie McGrath sends out pure sapphic vibes (which is one of the reasons the Jack subplot brings up the wrong vibes; not because Lena Luthor can't be bi or pan or whatever, but because it's super hard to watch Katie McGrath doing something that seems straight and for me to entirely believe it). Nothing to do with this story (and it's only part of the reason I love Lena Luthor) but I'm never going to be able to go through an entire conversation about Lena Luthor without mentioning this fact.

Every therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, counsellor, etc. who have ever sat down with her have easily concluded a simple fact within a few sessions: Lena Luthor does not know how to exist as simply Lena, she never learned how. And while that might make sense to her latest therapist (a kindly yet distant Doctor María Sanchez; who never quite gets Lena for the first 35 sessions, always seemingly asking questions or making statements that felt just off, wrong in some fundamental way) given Lex and Lillian, it’s been true since she’s been four years old.

(Lex and Lillian’s actions have quickly accelerated the process, true, but ever since she’s been given a last name; had it thrust upon her, she hasn’t been Lena any more, but Lena _Luthor_ , with all that the name implied.)

(She can’t even remember if her given name was always Lena, or something else. Helena, Katie, Joana, Moira. Shit, even something ridiculous like Morgana. Anything not beginning with a fucking L.)

(It’s far too late for her to wonder if her last name’s always been Luthor. That privilege was stripped away from her the moment she learned of Lionel’s original sin. Stripped away before she was even born, before she was even conceived. The moment he decided he could fuck someone who wasn’t Lillian, she lost her ability to be anything beside a Luthor.)

(Every now and then, she wonders if Lionel ever actually loved her birth mother. If he was happy with her birth mother in a way that she never quite saw from him with Lillian. She doesn’t wonder about it very often.)

It is no surprise to nearly everyone, then, that Lena believes herself to be a Luthor first, and Lena somewhere near the bottom of the list. It is also no great secret that she still loves her family, no matter how estranged they’ve become from her.

(Everyone knows she loves Lex, at least the kind man that he used to be. A select few knows that she still loves the Lex that exists now, despite everything that happens. He is still brilliant, charismatic, and loyal to those who perceives to be loyal to him. Everything she loved about the old him still is true. He hasn’t changed; his actions did.) 

(Many can guess she loves Lillian; most pin it on the abuse that twists minds. And while true, she still loves Lillian’s smile, the sense of approval it can give. Lillian has never loved Lena, never will, but Lena can’t help but love the woman who just nodded her head when she came out, gave her a quick smile and then carried on like it was nothing. Lena would later learn, later figure out, that this was just another way for Lillian to control Lena. It still didn’t stop her from holding that memory, and the handful of others like it, close to her chest.)

(Even fewer know that she loves Lionel. Most people don’t usually think about this part of the equation: Lionel is the last Luthor people remember. No one is quite surprised about the fact; he was morally dubious, sure, but he wasn’t an _evil_ Luthor. The last of the non-evil ones, people would say. So as much as she loves Lionel from the simple memories, she loves the image of him, the inveterate business man who wasn’t good, but wasn’t evil. It is Lionel she thinks of when she declares that L-Corp is trying to be a force for _good_. The last of the non-evil Luthors. She can’t stop herself from agreeing.)

(Less than five people know she still loves her birth mother, a woman whose name she doesn’t know, never took to cognize. In the same way that no child recognizes their mother’s name until they’re older, to Lena, this woman is just her birth mother. She broke down crying, thick tears rolling down her cheeks, the first time she realized, actually _realized_ , that she had no idea what little Lena, or whatever her name was, used to call her mother. Mum? Mother? Mummy? She knows that she’ll never that fact back.)

No, what takes time to learn; what all but a few of her therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, etc. never get around to seeing, is the fact that Lena Luthor feels incapable of loving complete people, that she can only love broken people. Even beyond her family, her lovers. Anyone she cares for is broken in some way.

(Even Jack, the closest exception to this rule, she can never admit to herself that she loved him. Sure, she says the words out loud, because what other words can she use to describe her feelings for her long-time friend and lover. And she was happy with him, truly. His easy smile, his brilliance, his penchant for poetry all drew her to him. But there was a reason why she told Kara that he was her Kryptonite, beyond the teasing insinuation that Lena knew her secret. She felt like she needed him far more than he needed her. That he was invested, but nowhere near as invested as she was.)

(She sometimes wonders, though. Wonders about the fact that he tried to make her choose between National City and him. He wasn’t cruel about it, no. Just cooly factual. That he couldn’t leave with her to National City, and he couldn’t do long distance. Not indefinitely. She hated his flat, factual tone; slightly patronizing. He knew that.)

(She still wonders if he wasn’t little broken too, making the split a little less amicable than it needed to be. That maybe she didn’t know Jack as well as she thought she did; that she didn’t have all the puzzle pieces to him.)

(She wonders if this idiosyncrasy is why she never saw another man again, never felt inclined to. She wonders if it’s why she never truly tried to figure out if she’s bi, pan, gay with a Jack shaped exception; not that there’s a long list of not-Jacks’. Only four or five. It doesn’t stop her from wondering.)

(But she killed him. She fucking killed him to save another broken person; a person who _needed_ , still needs, Lena as much as Lena needed and still needs her. And if that doesn’t say every fucking thing about her, then she doesn’t know what will.)

Some of her carers hypothesize Lena believes that she breaks these people; turns normal and functioning people into broken pieces that can’t be reassembled. But the truth is more complex; she can only love broken people, and if they’re not broken… well, then, then she might break them.

(She doesn’t think, for example, that she broke Lex. She just didn’t try to put him together again; left the project on the backburner. Not because it wasn’t important or urgent. No, it’s because as long as she didn’t begin to attempt the task, she didn’t have to see it.)

(Nor does she think she broke Veronica. _Roulette_. No, that bitch was already three quarters of the way broken when she first met Lena. Lena wasn’t the one who pushed her over the edge. She can even remember the time that she first saw Veronica broken; the first time that she asked for Lena to call her Roulette while three of her fingers were still inside Lena. The first time she saw that Veronica had taken this new identity too far. She never did, and soon their relationship, if it could even be called that, ended. She would never admit it, can never admit it, but despite that, Veronica gave her the most intense orgasms of her life, bordering on painful. Sure, she enjoyed other fucks, other sex, more. They’re more pleasant, more loving. More patient, less ethically dubious. But there was something to them, something to the intensity and pain that felt right. Sex is always more for Lena; always something grander, something metaphorical. She has no idea what this particular metaphor is, but she knows it’s in there something. So yes, she loved, perhaps even loves, Veronica, but she didn’t break her.)

(And most importantly, she didn’t break Kara. Kara came broken, already incomplete. Kara can never be complete. Who knows how many identities are fighting inside of her? How many are seeking dominance? There are the obvious ones: Kara Danvers, mild mannered reporter for CatCo, who is a bumbling mess. Supergirl, the hero with a spine of steel who sees the best in everyone. Kara Zor-El, everything Kryptonian about her, all of the socialization buried deep inside of her, the pure loneliness of a culture, a civilization, a species lost. But there are more. Many more. Many that only a few can see; Lena is the only one fortunate enough to be privy to all of them. Even Alex, the most important person in the entire universe to Kara, doesn’t see them all. There’s one, one she doesn’t see.

There is Kara the foodie, who loves food not only as a sensual experience, but as a way to understand the world around her. Kara the person who almost certainly belongs on the autism spectrum, who has trouble keeping all of the sensory information of her world in check, who sometimes needs to find the right kind of environment, needs to be allowed to act in a way that seems strange, to reduce the sensory overload. Kara the sister, who would kill for Alex, would die for her, and no other relationship in her life means more to Kara; Kara would burn all other relationships she has before even attempting to harm the one with her sister. Kara the normal person, taught to act as human as possible, to never draw attention to herself; it’s what makes her disguise so effective, as most people only ever see this Kara. There is Kara the lost child, stuck permanently in time in the moment she was stuck in the pod, that she got lost in the Phantom Zone; this is the Kara that never escaped. Kara the lover, so gentle, so giving even though she is unable to reciprocate fully, unable to receive, unable to let go, unable to orgasm; a constant reminder that she isn’t human, but she loves humans as if she was one. And there are even more.

Sometimes, Lena envies this fact about Kara. That she has so many Kara’s to choose from, and she can freely choose to be which one she is at any given time. Each Kara is as important as the rest, as lovely and beautiful. She isn’t just two identities, one buried far beneath the other. No matter the pain it gives Kara, if the time came, she can let the others rest and fade away, even if only for a bit.)

(Jess, on the other hand. Jess belongs to the category of “broken by Lena”. The prime example, truly. Jess, loyal to a fault; too young and too tough to be easily broken, already surviving unshattered by her brother’s mistreatment. She had a bright future ahead of her, the genius that she is. And so, Lena didn’t break Jess by hiring Jess as her secretary. No, it was an important stepping stone for Jess; a way to learn the administrative side of business before she can spread her wings and do so much more. Nor did she break Jess by offering a job at National City, asking her to come along, while still letting her say no. Those events didn’t help; they contributed, but they didn’t. Nor even the fact that Lena overworked Jess, presumably killing off most, if not all, of her social life, merely from the fact that Lena didn’t have much of one.

No, it was when she became more than a Secretary to Lena, more than someone who she can rely on for work purposes. When she actually came around and considered Lena as a _friend_ , as someone who mattered in her life outside of merely signing paychecks. It was when monthly lunches began, no talk of work allowed. It was when Lena asked Jess for advice regarding pets, and whether or not she should get one with Kara. Lena broke Jess, shattered her into tiny pieces, when Jess became her _friend_. Became integral to her life, both inside and out of L-Corp.

Strong, loyal Jess would disagree. Of course she would. She’d say that friendship doesn’t break an individual; she’d probably be quoting Kara. But, the moment that Jess became more, Lena knew she wouldn’t be able to let go. And that’s what breaks people, isn’t it? The inability to let go; the inability to be let go of. Keeping Jess late is now no longer a reflection of keeping L-Corp afloat. The fact that most of the time, Jess doesn’t have a significant other, a partner to return home to; that when she does they don’t last more than a few months. This is how Lena breaks people: slowly and over time.)

It takes 36 sessions with Dr. Sanchez, once a week, every week. 36 sessions for Dr. Sanchez to finally have all of the pieces, all of the clues necessary to understand this picture of Lena Luthor; the woman who defines herself in measure of others, who can only fit herself in the crevices of the incomplete. And Lena is prepared; prepared for a diagnosis of co-dependency, to work on herself, to try to force herself to love herself. But the words never come. Instead, she is simply told: “It’s okay to love broken people, even if you don’t love yourself. Not ideal, but okay.”

It doesn’t mean she’s suddenly Lena. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t recoil from the implication that it’s okay to be imperfect. But for one moment, she forgets that she’s a Luthor. For one moment, she believes that one day, one day in the future, she might discover Lena. For one moment, she’s interested in who she’s going to meet when that happens.

**Author's Note:**

> Probably next time is Jess the Secretary; who probably has the largest fandom impact to screen time ratio. Like what, she's been in two scenes y'all? I'm here for it. Probably a little more light hearted, but I can't guarantee until I start writing.


End file.
